January 4, 2013

Bahai student expelled in Tehran

Mithaq Imam Verdi ( میثاق امام وردی ) a Bahai student of Computer Science at the K.N.Toosi University of Technology in Tehran, has been expelled because of his “adherence to the Bahai Faith.” About two weeks before the final examinations of his first Bachelor’s year, he was summoned to the University’s security office, and was later told indirectly that he had been expelled. Only after he had gone to the university’s Director of Security was he told that he had been expelled because of his Bahai beliefs. However staff at the University’s central office described this as “bizarre and illogical.”

[Iran’s official propaganda denies that Iran operates an apartheid system. In November 2011, the head of Iran’s judiciary, Mohammad Javad Larijani, claimed “you can find Bahai’s in universities as students as teachers. There are more than 300 Baha’i students in universities. They are professors. They are very affluent people; they have big factories and companies.” Thus the staff of the university office may have been genuinely unaware of the policy to deny Bahais access to tertiary education.]

Two years ago, Mithaq’s sister, Mina Imam Verdi ( مینا امام وردی ), was expelled for the same reason from Zanjan University, where she was in the third semester of a degree in agriculture.